An Aerial Manipulator for Robot-to-robot Torch Relay Task: System Design and Control Scheme

Torch relay is an important tradition of the Olympics and heralds the start of the Games. Robots applied in the torch relay activity can not only demonstrate the technological capability of humans to the world but also provide a sight of human lives with robots in the future. This article presents an aerial manipulator designed for the robot-to-robot torch relay task of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. This aerial manipulator system is composed of a quadrotor, a 3 DoF (Degree of Freedom) manipulator, and a monocular camera. This article primarily describes the system design and system control scheme of the aerial manipulator. The experimental results demonstrate that it can complete robot-to-robot torch relay task under the guidance of vision in the ice and snow field.